


Favorite Sound

by pantykinksam



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Comforting Dean, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Jess, Post-Stanford, Thunder and Lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 16:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12112269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantykinksam/pseuds/pantykinksam
Summary: After Jess dies, Sam doesn't take well to thunderstorms. Dean's there to help him sort through it. And whatever's left between them.





	Favorite Sound

**Author's Note:**

> (For Lauren, who broke my month long writer's block and actually inspired me to posT something for once.)  
> Also I am not going to justify this shitty Drabble except for this: considering I haven't updated or written anything that I've gotten out there, and that I wrote this in 24 hours, it could be worse.
> 
> ((2018 me is here to tell you that 2017 me was wRONG and it couldn't be worse and this is just my apology in advance))

“Wudd’re you doin’ up, kid?” 

Sam halts, his heel digging in hard to the cold tile. He ducks his head under the heavy stare of the figure in the shadows, swallowing hard. Outside, the sound of the roof groaning under the weight of a relentless rainstorm is enough to make Sam cringe. He scratches the back of his neck, toeing at the rifts in the floor. 

“S’nothin’. Thought I heard somethin’,” he says, his mouth a thin line. “Did I wake you?” 

The shadow in the light of window rests its hands behind its head, against the headboard. Sam can’t see the smile in the dark, but he knows it’s there. “No, no.” A shake of a head lets Sam relax. He steps closer toward open arms that welcome him, his shoulders curled inward sheepishly. His head is still down, and he curls his fingers into the sleeves of his button-up. The arms open wider and Dean’s face comes into view, big and bright as the moon outside the window.

Sam puts his hands out and accepts the offering, his body melding into Dean’s, soft and pliant. Against Dean’s chest, he hears the jolted grunt of his brother, adjusting to the weight of him. Christ, he hears Dean say, you’re a friggin’ freezer. Sam smiles, his lips turning upward in a lazy sort of grin, which he hides in Dean’s bare chest. He’s too old for this, he tells himself. It’s been two decades since he could fit comfortably in Dean’s lap. Still, his brother makes no protest, and Sam wants this, so he makes no move to pull away. It’s been so long. 

Losing Jess had been hard, but facing Dean afterward had been harder. He couldn’t look Dean in the eye for a long time, after Stanford. It was too much to admit that all he’d done to build some resistance between himself and Dean’s magnetism had crumbled. He missed Jess, but it would never equate to the loss he felt being away from Dean. It felt like a dead limb, a weight he had to carry around with him everywhere he went. Like a colossal mistake he’d never be able to reverse. 

He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. And then the lightning flashes. Sam jolts. He coughs suddenly, but it’s a weak cover-up. Embarrassed, he sniffs, focusing on anything else. His brain is muddled with lack of sleep, though, and Dean is so warm. The hand splayed across his back, rubbing in small, shallow circles is a necessary lullaby, and Sam’s heartbeat dulls to a low murmur again. The blinds whistle through the cracks in the windowpane, tea-kettle shrill. 

“What’re y’thinkin’ about?” Dean asks, his jaw slack and his chin hanging low on top of Sam’s head. It’s not like Dean to break the silence, to say anything when they’re like this, some kind of unspoken rule. It muddles Sam’s thoughts, and he coughs again.

“Not thinking.” He says. Dean huffs a laugh, and Sam feels a kiss pressed to the top of his head. His chest blooms red. 

“Yeah, right. You’re always thinking.” 

Another clap of thunder. The lamplight in the corner behind the door flickers. Sam thanks past-Dean for shutting the windows. He shudders, clenching his fists.

“I’m not.” He shifts, snapping at Dean. Ashamed, he pries the two of them apart and reaches behind for a pillow to settle in to fill the space beside his brother, the bed hardly fitting them both with Sam so spread out like this. Dean gives him a quizical look, rolls his eyes. Sam feels the bed dip and hears Dean’s heavy sigh, and then they’re eye to eye on the pillow. Dean puts his ear to the pillow and blinks in the fuzzy light. He strokes hair from Sam’s eyes and draws the hand down across his jaw. Sam gets to watch a slow, easy smile spread across his face. Sam envies him. He makes this all look so easy, what goes unspoken between them. 

“You’re scared. S’that it?”

Dean knows Sam better than he gives him credit for.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut and shoves his fists under the pillow, gritting his teeth. “God, shut up, Dean.” 

He hears the juvenile crack in his voice and feels the familiar boulder in his throat that always came with letting his guard down around Dean.

“What is it, then Sam? I mean, I’m honored, but.” Dean chuckles. “S’not every day you come around here in the middle of the night.” 

Sam frowns. “I was taking a piss.”

But he knows Dean, too, so it’s no surprise when Dean snorts, a hot gust of breath across Sam’s face. Sam feels strong arms curl around his midsection and it makes his insides coil with an unforgotten heat. He sucks in a breath when Dean curls him against his chest, an act of affection Sam hadn’t dared to ask for once John had made it clear they were getting much too old for “that kind of thing”. 

“There’s no bathroom on my side o’ the house, is there?” 

The trees outside cast long shadows through the blinds, and lightning comes crashing through the window in bursts of white light. Sam hisses. Dean shushes him, winking with a grin that drips with so much confidence Sam would blush if he weren’t so stubborn. 

“This is new.” Dean looked up at him in the dark half of the lamplight. He quirked a brow and searched Sam’s face with wandering eyes. “What’s with you and rainstorms all of a sudden?” Dean’s voice is low and gruff in Sam’s ear and it makes his heart soar. He lets his face fall, pressing a hand to Dean’s chest. A flicker of fear darts across his face, because he doesn’t know if he has jurisdiction here, touching him, in Dean’s bed, but either Dean doesn’t notice or he doesn’t mind. Sam supposes it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re in the dark.

“It’s not the weather, jackass,” he says, his words minced with flecks of embarrassment. 

“Yeah? Bullshit. I’m calling bullshit.” 

“It’s not, okay? It’s not the weather.” Sam shakes his head and burrows deeper into the pillows. It doesn’t help, because the whole goddamn place smells like his brother and this is the last thing he needs right now but it’s soothing, and he can’t bring himself to stop. “The noise. It’s,” he sighs. “It’s the noise.”

Dean bites his tongue, worry in his eyes. But if he keeps silent on Sam’s accord, it’s all for nothing, because he’s silent again. The trees moan behind the woodwork, and Sam takes another long inhale. 

“Yeah? Since when?” Sam is grateful for his brother, then. Grateful he doesn’t bring up the double standard that is Sam at 22 afraid of a little wind and a boom or two, but who has been in in-the-flesh shotgun duels with evil and fired enough gunshots to burst anyone’s eardrums a dozen times. 

“Since Jess,” Sam grunts, as if it should be obvious. 

Dean only nods, and Sam can’t read his brother’s face for the first time in a very long time. It makes him shift in the sheets, uneasy and entirely uncertain that maybe Dean doesn’t get it after all. “Alright,” he says, and Sam laughs. 

“Alright?” 

“Yeah, Sammy, alright.” 

Sam braces himself for the impact of a thousand emasculating jibes his way, but they don’t come. Instead, it’s Dean’s lips against his forehead, plush and hot against his skin. Sam gasps, his mouth parted in half a sigh. It’s a half second of skin-on-skin contact and it makes all of the blood in Sam’s cheeks swim to the surface. 

Another flash of lightning breaks through the clouds and Sam is ready for the clash of thunder, can feel it coming. He tenses, squeezing his eyes shut. If he can block out the sound maybe he can forget the sight of Dean, pinned to the ceiling and bloody, that’s painted on the backs of his eyelids. 

And the thunder comes, as it always does, but at the first clash, Dean kisses him. The thunder rolls over the roof and the rain is falling harder and the trees are flailing faster but Dean is kissing him. Dean is kissing him open and unstitching the seam of his mouth, prying at him for more, and Sam starts to give it to him. He makes a satisfied keen of pleasure, shaken loose of his fears and falling into it. Dean grunts when Sam nips at his bottom lip and purrs when he tugs on his hair, and Sam remaps the feel of Dean’s mouth for the first time since he came home to him. 

It’s been years since Dean kissed Sam this way, and Sam aches with the memory of it. He pulls his brother as close as possible, like he’s afraid he’ll see the flames in Dean’s eyes if he looks up. Dean doesn’t break away, though, only stops initiating. He lets Sam take the lead and kiss him for a while. Sam’s lungs feel like they’re tied down with stones but he doesn’t stop to breathe. They kiss and they kiss and Sam feels the tension unravel in a shiver down his back when Dean smiles against his lips.

“Atta boy,” he croaks, and Sam allows himself a smile. “Atta boy,” Dean says again, and Sam allows himself a laugh.

They lay that way while the rain falls, Sam pressed to Dean’s chest. They’re quiet, save for the occasional sigh. Dean is humming, and Sam finds comfort in the lull. 

“You’ve got nothing to get worked up about, now.” Dean murmurs. 

Sam’s teeth grind away at his bottom lip. He tries focusing on the coppery scent of the amulet under his nose, the stale detergent smell hanging around the ring of Dean’s collarbones, though his shirt is lost somewhere on the floor. It’s not working, and his lungs won’t decontract.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but his voice breaks in half. Dean is laughing at him, in a way only Dean can without getting something back. 

“Oh yeah? For what?” 

Sam balks, his eyes flitting open. He props his chin against Dean’s sternum and scans his face. He finds himself shrugging, a shaky hand trailing its way through bristling hair. “I don’t know,” he admits, “It seemed like the right thing to say. Everything?” 

The air is still, the wind has quieted, and the rain is white noise now. Dean is smirking at him, and Sam wants to kiss him, so he does. 

Dean’s hands lace behind his head and he follows it like natural right, goes with the current of his mouth. 

“You got nothin’ to ‘pologize for, brother.” Sam knows his brother is tired when his words slur enough to be indecipherable. “Nothin’ I can accept, anyway.” 

Sam swallows. He deserves that, but it doesn’t go down any easier. His ears are rushing and his face is flushed and he wants to leave, but he needs to hear Dean out. He’s earned that much.

“No, Sam. Not wha’ I mean.” A kiss to his forehead makes Sam furrow his brow. “I can’t ‘ccept it, ‘cause it doesn’t mean anything.”

Sam is silent.

“I missed you, so fuckin’ much.”

Minutes pass. Sam can’t hear anything over the sound of his own heartbeat. 

“Words don’t mean shit, after that.” 

Sam gets a flash of the scene on the staircase, his bags in his hands and his face mottled with bruises. He’d said goodbye like it was forgivable, leaving them like that. 

“You’re gonna show me. And you’re gonna stick around. Y’hear?” 

Sam hears, but he can’t say that because that boulder in his throat is making its way up into his mouth and it’s pinned his tongue to the floor of it. His eyes flood with tears and when Dean takes his hand he squeezes it, hard, fingernails sunk deep in his knuckles. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” He knows Dean knows, but he has to say it out loud, needs him to know for sure. “I’m here again.”

“Yeah.”

“And I wish I’d never left.” 

Dean catches a breath Sam hadn’t noticed he’d been holding, and with his ear to Dean’s ribcage, he can hear the flutter of his heart. “I know,” he rasps, stroking Sam’s arm. “I know.” 

The thunderstorm is forgotten, and Sam feels something mend between them. He doesn’t mention it. Instead, he presses his lips back on Dean’s and doesn’t stop stitching them up until he can feel the veil lift from Dean’s eyes and he’s not smiling anymore. 

The rain falls, the sky crackles, and the clouds roar. It’s Sam’s favorite sound in the world.


End file.
